Just in time for Valentine's Day - Chubby Cherub

by: Aron Deppert
Chubby Cherub was released in the United States in 1986 by Bandai on the NES. It had been released in Japan a year earlier under the name “Q-taro the Ghost: Bow Wow Panic”. The main character of the game was from a manga series in Japan and apparently the localization team didn’t think Americans could handle it, thus Chubby Cherub was born. Even though he looks like Cupid, this is a cherub of a different sort. Instead of making people love each other, his love can destroy small animals!

That's the true power of love -- killing puppies!

It seems that someone or something has taken the little cherub’s friends and stashed them in buildings, though I am only speculating this since the game makes no effort to relay the story line to you at all. The only things standing in our protagonist’s way are…DOGS! They bark at the cupid-looking fellow and send little icons with the letter B on them flying across the screen. If you touch even one of these bark icons, then BAM – you’ve got one dead cherub on your hands. Thankfully, the people at Bandai didn’t leave the cute guy defenseless; if you eat enough junk food, you can shoot little peachy colored hearts at the mean poochies. Lollipops give you ammo for your love ray, and the rest of the nutritionally devoid food powers your flight meter. The lollipops were so few and far between, so it was really essential to keep the flight meter full so I could fly around the dogs.

Ahhh...it's killer b's!

Though this game is very cute, the difficulty was extremely high. The dogs that barked at you often sent their icons out like a machine gun, and jumped erratically to seemingly random places which made them next to impossible to avoid. It only took one hit to send the heavenly hero to his grave (do cherubs die?) and when you came back, you were out of juice for your love beam. The flying meter is constantly depleting itself, which means that aside from dodging rapid fire barks, you need to constantly be eating food. Wonder why he’s such a chubby cherub? I was only able to make it to the end of the first stage once, and there are twelve total, so I think a good amount of cursing and frustration would be spent on this game if I decided to try to defeat it.

In a nutshell, I would suggest making your own love this Valentine’s day and not relying on the help of a flying naked baby with an eating disorder.

Image Credit: Screenshot, and en.wikipedia.org